In my many years of experience consulting on supply chain optimization related projects, one of the biggest challenges faced by companies today is the inability to create an accurate forecast. What I’ve often seen are companies who neglect to account for the fact that no matter what, a forecast is always wrong. The key to success is knowing how wrong it is and on which horizons.

During my session, I’ll provide lots of advice on ways in which to better forecast. But here are three key steps that organizations need to take to achieve more clarification on the scalability and decision horizons within their supply chain.

Step 1: Clarify what the bottlenecks are
and their scalability

The supply chain bottlenecks can be both internal and external; production lines, vendors, warehouse and logistics capacities etc.

Step 2: Determine what decisions are to be taken in which forums for which horizon

The purpose is to agree on the responsibilities for each decision – but also to be able to establish initiatives for increase of capacity

Step 3: Define what forecast aggregation level is needed for the decisions – dnd determine the forecast error and bias for those levels in the relevant horizons

Based on the key decisions and horizons, the required forecast aggregation can be determined for each horizon – and the forecast error and BIAS can then be determined for each horizon